Goals update

I ran Old Hillsbrad last night, finally ticking off the "Revered with Keepers of Time" goal. While I was there I had a proper look around for the first time, with a visit into Southshore to see some soon-to-be-NPCs, and the bit in the inn where the Scarlet Crusade founders do their thing. I was a bit disappointed to find you can't get as far as Dalaran, but the instance has to have limits somewhere.

It was a slightly daft group - a 66 mage and all the rest of us 70s. We started out pretty complacently before a few deaths made us take things a bit more seriously, and I probably reinforced the DPS warrior's bad habits by healing him far more than would have been possible in a same-level group. Still, a good fun run.

My goals list for Grulnak is now fairly wrapped up. I still need to get to revered with Sporeggar and max out my weapon skills and fishing. I've also still got to complete Magister's Terrace, would love to go to Blackwing Lair, and ideally would take a look at Mount Hyjal. I've also added to that list exhalted with the Cenarion Expedition for the flask recipe, although that's more of a nice to have. I've got other goals to do with gearing (for example I'd like to improve my Scryers rep to get the better shoulder enchant), but I'm now wondering how long it will be before a release date for WotLK is announced, and presumably raiding will start to ramp down. I'll then start to concentrate more on my alts, with a view to getting them to appropriate levels ready for the release.

It's really just a question of how much raid content we'll get to see before the expansion.

Slightly embarrassed

Serpentshrine Cavern last night. Now we have our resist tanks we did Hydross first, getting him on the second attempt in what seemed a very straight forward fight - but which we then noticed was completed 8 seconds before the enrage timer...! Second guild kill and first for me, and netted me the Blackfathom Warbands. A 15% upgrade to the Whirlwind Bracers that I spent many raids waiting to drop from Attumen.

One of the hidden advantages of being a resto shaman is that if healing mail drops, you've got a pretty good chance of an upgrade if you need it - except for those rare occasions when we have 4 or 5 shamans in the raid. I occasionally think back on being a shadowpriest, competion for cloth caster drops is not one of the plus points of that class!

We then went on to Lurker, where my performance was frankly sub-par. Three deaths to spouts in three attempts, including 2 deaths on the go where we got him, very embarrassing. One I'm claiming as a bug - it seems there's a small ledge on the inside of the main ring, if you're swimming there the game still treats you as being out of the water... In my defence I was standing in such a place that if the Lurker went clockwise, which he did every time, then he'd spout me pretty much immediately. However I should have had ample raid warning to get in the water. Must do better!

On a slightly scary note, the first 2 bosses of tier 5 content have no drops left for me (thanks to the drop and my badge boots). I must be a proper raider...

Favourite instance number 2

Blackrock Depths is probably my second favourite instance. It's got a real feel of scale to it, and although it can be confusing the non-linear nature of the place is so much better than the "one long corridor" approach that's so common in a lot of other instances.

Despite spending a lot of time in there on three different characters and taken pretty much every route imaginable I'd never been all the way to the end, with runs usually finishing at the Molten Core portal.

Last night I rectified that, with my trusty Earth Shield and a 2-handed axe talent build. I had a few nasty moments, and a few stupid moments of forgetting to switch to my enhancement gear after casting Earth Shield, but made it through OK. I can see why people didn't bother with the Emporer - The Lyceum is frankly a pain - but I'm glad to have done it.

I also got the Circle of Flame which looks rather good. I might just add that to my "about town" gear set.

Gnomeregan and Stratholme

I spent Sunday morning on my druid, Duillnar, in Gnomeregan with my stepson's paladin. I still don't like that place - partly the look doesn't really work for me, and partly I can never find my way around. Also, how can a place that small ever have been a city for an entire race? Ironforge has a much more epic scale to it, that's what an underground city should be like.

Anyway, we got through it fine, killed the end boss for a nice quest reward, and were finished in time for lunch... :)

I really enjoyed the druid role - although I don't much like feral cat dps the versatility is great. Our tank was a level 46 paladin, who unfortunately didn't really know what he was doing yet, so gave me a chance to occasionally go bear to pull a mob off the healer. Equally I could have healed if we'd needed it.

An odd group set up though - 2 paladins, a holy priest, enhancement shaman and myself. At one point we had a death on a trash pull. "It's OK", said the tank "I can res". "Actually, we can all res" says I...! I wonder how often that happens...

For now I think I'll stick with the druid. Although I could level up my shadow priest, and could still group with the stepson's paladin knowing we just needed to find 3 dps, I like the option of being able to tank.

I then spent Sunday afternoon in Scarlet Strat, and Monday in UD Strat, finishing up some Argent Dawn quests and getting myself up to Revered. My guild wants to see Naxx before it moves to Northrend, and while I had most of the materials to get attuned at Honoured rep getting to Revered with them was unfinished business from pre-Burning Crusade. It turns out that two elemental shaman can kill level 60 elites real quick, at least until we pull too many mobs and casting pushback starts to be a pain. Two shamans and a rogue are even quicker - we built a really good pile of Bile Spewer corpses, and barely saw the Baron before 2 elementals and our own dps downed him.

Seeing the inside of Naxx almost made me wish I'd been more of a hardcore raider before. Almost...

The screenshot above is there to remind me how much I love being an orc, even while I'm dabbling with druidism!

More alliance alts

My shaman is slightly in limbo at the moment, with real life making raiding difficult. Instead I've been dabbling with alts again...

Big Bear Butt inspired me to start up a Night Elf shadow priest. I think the slightly darker, mysterious side of the NElf lore goes quite well with the class. He's level 12 currently, and I'm enjoying seeing the Draenai starting area for the first time, but I'm not sure about him long term. Having already levelled a 70 shadowpriest there's an easy familiarity to playing him (although I miss a few skills I've not got yet like Psychic Scream). But conversely he's not showing me anything new. I'll probably level him to 20 to get Mind Flay, and to see the rest of the starting quests, but then he'll probably get retired. If you got Shadowform at 20 I'd probably keep him going, because that's when the class becomes really cool, but 20 to 40 is a fair old time commitment, even these days.

The main reason he'll probably get retired though is my druid will probably take his place. I'm looking for a character to go with my stepson's dwarf paladin, and he seems to fit the bill better. Partially because he's feral, and hence in rogue gear, as opposed to the priest in a robe - he just looks cooler. Then there's the ability to do all 3 roles - tank, dps and heal - compared to "just" 2 for the priest. And while I'd rather be tanking in plate than in fur, the shapeshifting thing is rather fun.

I still have to try out my hunter in a good instance group though, just to see how that goes.

And my latest plan is to have a dwarf death knight, once they're released, to satisfy my need for a character in plate. That will also mean I have one each of my three favourite races - along with a slew of other characters I'm doing my best to leave retired.

What I want in WotLK - more caves

Black Fathom Deeps is my all-time favourite instance in the game, purely for the feel of it as you go inside. For me it invokes my old pen-and-paper RPG days in a way that no other instance quite does. Something to do with the low wide tunnels with sandy floors I think, but I'm not really sure.

Thinking about this today I decided that what I'd most like to see in the expansion is more new cave layouts. I'm not sure what's so right about BFD, but I know that the newness of some of the zones in the Burning Crusade was spoiled by the reappearance of the same old cave layouts we've been seeing all the way through the game. As soon as you go inside you know that there's on or two locations where the quest object will be. A little while ago in Searing Gorge on my hunter I came across a layout I'd not seen before and the disorientation of not recognising it immediately was very welcome.

Fully epic'd - what next...?

A run of the second half of Kara last night netted me enough badges to replace my last blue with the Necklace of Eternal Hope. Now that everyone's in epics I may be relatively only as well geared as my previous best - 2 or 3 purples and Zul Gurub blues - but it feels like some sort of milestone.

The run itself wasn't great - we're now running through second and third alts and the occasional new person. This means some characters are undergeared and too squishy, and understandable mistakes by the newbies can be frustrating. I'm was there for the badges but mainly the t4 head from the Prince to replace my only non-mail item. We didn't down him when we probably should have - the tank was a bit undergeared and didn't really have enough health, but although we got to phase 3 on our third attempt keeping both the tank and the dps alive at that stage proved too much, and we were too tired for a 4th go.

In terms of development of my shaman I'm getting towards the end until the expansion. I'm not sure I want the t4 head piece enough to clear the trash between Curator and Aran again, so I'll keep turning up to our progression raids in SSC and meanwhile do a few other goals like maxing out skills and soloing a few level 60 instances. I'm also going to move my non-resto talent points into Enhancement, purely to get instant ghost wolf. It just seems right for the character.

Apart from that I'm not really sure were to go next. I've decided to park the warlock again - it occurs to me that he doesn't really get me anything new, apart from the possibility of a high level enchanter. If I want to dps I can respec to Elemental and although they're not popular as dps for 5-mans due to the lack of crowd control a warlock is probably the next least popular choice except when there's demons around, as fear and seduce aren't highly throught of.

I might spend some time on my hunter, at least to try some Hellfire Peninsula instances as dps/cc - I want to test instancing with dwarfs and the like. Overall I prefer the Horde as a faction, due to humans being smug and gnomes being gnomes, but I feel that orcs should be in the majority as the centre of the Horde, not a tiny minority as they actually seem to be.

I might level my orc warrior, for tanking and because undead have tiny shoulder armour. This sounds ridiculous, but try comparing how the Warbringer set looks on the two races. Or perhaps (unlikely) if I decide Alliance is where it's at then a human paladin is called for.

I'm also tempted to try Eve Online for a total change.

Fantasy rather than sci-fi is where my heart is though.